Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/Early/double redirect study

Enforce during edit
This would seem to be the best option, but it would also need to somehow be applied to page moves. Would it be possible to automatically change the redirects when a page is moved (just as the page from which it is moved is automatically changed to a redirect itself)? -- BD2412 talk 17:41, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes I believe this is possible (but I am not a Mediawiki dev). I hope to give this study to the developers after some comments come in. I'll be sure to integrate your notes, they are good. Thanks! Triddle 18:03, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
 * Thank you! -- BD2412 talk 01:02, July 19, 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree, I believe it is very possible to detect and change redirects to a page when it is moved. The SQL/PHP to do this would be rather elementary.  I would write an example, but I have no idea how the database for Wikipedia is structured.  Definately a good idea, and one that should be implemented. --Anorris 23:47, July 19, 2005 (UTC)


 * Sounds feasible and it's something that I don't think anybody would oppose. I'd suggest you contact the developers. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 11:56, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Bugzilla
If there's support for Mediawiki software changes, someone will eventually need to file a feature request in MediaZilla. -- Beland 22:45, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Added feature request
See http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3747 for the feature request that points to this page. Triddle 16:13, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Not all cases are alike
I think the main problem with the software "enforcing" changes to redirects is that not all of those changes would actually be correct or desired. And there's also no one action which creates redirects; consider the following:
 * If a user creates a new redirect, and the target is also a redirect, the software could fairly trivially disallow the edit, with an appropriate message.
 * But if a user turns a page of content into a redirect, and there are redirects pointing at that page, the software would need to accept the edit and "propogate" it by changing all the redirects. That's possible, but it might be surprising [and potentially disruptive] behaviour for such a simple action to have such far-reaching consequences. We have no other feature I can think of which involves changing multiple pages in one swift edit like this.
 * If a page is moved, and there are redirects pointing to it, they probably need to point directly to the new title, so could be automatically "fixed" - subject to the "surprising side-effects" mentionned above.
 * But: if a page is moved to make way for a new one at the old name, the redirects pointing to the old name may need to point to either of the two "new" articles (either the one with the same name, or the one with the same content), so need manual attention.
 * Also, if the move was mistaken, or deliberately temporary for some reason, the automatic changes would be, at the very least, a waste of time. They'd also presumably show up as unnecessary edits on recentchanges, and watchlists.

In previous discussions (e.g. bug 2402, this mediawiki-l discussion) I came to the conclusion that a built-in facility for fixing double redirects - perhaps offered during page moves, as well as as a general tool - would be extremely useful, but that it should only assist a user in carrying out the task. It could be as straight-forward as a series of checkboxes to confirm each fix, but it shouldn't just happen silently. And to minimise misuse (deliberate and accidental) we might want to limit the tool to some subset of users - either admins-only, or some more inclusive subset of users (is "move page" still blocked for completely new users?)

In other words, while we can automate the process, we shouldn't automate the decisions. - IMSoP 22:14, 19 October 2005 (UTC) [in "verbose" mode this evening; as usual ;)]


 * Thanks for the comments; I think what ever can help is good. I've realized that double redirect cleanup (as it stands right now) is better suited to a bot so the human editors can spend time doing things that require more human based decisions. As such I think this will be the last human powered double redirect cleanup project I organize. Unfortunately I don't have time to write up a bot to do the cleanup but I'm sure someone else will get to it eventually. I think there is a very real danger that when the double-redirects aren't so prominent that they'll be forgotten again and considering they impact the user experience I think that would be a darn shame. Triddle 16:02, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Bot work
User:Kakashi Bot is in the process of getting approval from Wikipedia talk:Bots to automatically fix most double redirects. -- Beland 08:04, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

prevention better than cure - merge cases
Whenever we move a page, we are reminded to check for double re-directs and fix them, if any. However, whenever we merge two articles, and convert one of them into a re-direct, we do not get reminded to check for double re-directs. We should probably be reminded whenever a re-direct is made so that this problem can be remedied by the initiator of the re-direct himself. I have placed this suggestion on Wikipedia talk:Double redirects as well but not much action has taken place on that page of late. --Gurubrahma 10:49, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Allow double redirects but detect true redirect loops?
My understanding is that the MediaWiki software doesn't automatically follow a second redirect only to avoid entering a cycle of redirects. It seems the real solution is for MediaWiki to go ahead an keep following redirects until it actually detects a cycle rather than just stopping after the second. Is anyone working on this? SuperDude mentioned this on the double redirects talk page.

If this was implemented, I think in some cases it may be reasonable to allow double redirects to exist. As an example, the article Little oh used to redirect to Little O notation. Little O notation redirects to Big O notation, since there is currently no article specifically about little O notation and big O notation is the most closely related concept.

It seems to me that if MediaWiki would follow these redirects correctly, then this situation is preferable to having Little oh redirect to Big O notation. This way if an article is ever created that deals with little O notation specifically, then Little oh would already redirect to the best article.

This particular case isn't important, of course, but there may be other cases like that.

-- bethenco 06:25, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Make The Software Do It Automatically
Why can't the wikipedia software check for double redirects when someone moves a page, and automatically rectify the problem? --Username132 (talk) 11:22, 29 August 2006 (UTC)